A new fiber optic technology, developed by researchers from Japan and Australia, is expected to be deployed in the next 10 years.
A team of international researchers has successfully developed an Internet transmission system capable of transmitting 1.7 petabits of data over 67 kilometers of fiber optic cable, equivalent to 17 million times the current broadband connection speeds.
Fiber optics is a crucial component of the modern Internet, serving to connect data centers and mobile phone towers across continents. Each fiber optic strand is thinner than a human hair, approximately 125 microns, yet strong enough to handle the world’s Internet traffic. Technology companies like Facebook and Google even own their own undersea fiber optic infrastructure to ensure connectivity.
The future demand for capacity will exceed the ability of existing global Internet fiber optic lines to meet it. (Photo: Alamy).
In 1988, TAT8, the first transatlantic fiber optic cable, was laid with a capacity of 20 megabits. Now, more than three decades later, the Grace Hopper, the latest generation of cables, boasts a capacity of 22 terabits, over a million times more than TAT8.
However, due to the increasing demand for online services, current fiber optic technologies will also not be sufficient to meet future capacity needs. A multinational team of researchers has begun creating the next generation of fiber optic cables that can handle even more data transmission.
The optical fibers within the core of the cable can be made thicker to create greater capacity, but thicker fibers can make the cable less flexible, more prone to breakage, and harder to install over long distances. Additionally, more cables can be installed, but this increases operational and infrastructure costs.
Most current cables consist of a core carrying multiple light signals. Due to interference between signals, this existing technology is limited to a few terabits per second.
The research team from the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Japan and Sumitomo Electric Industries has discovered a cable design that uses 19 cores, each carrying a signal. The optical fibers produced in this way can still meet global standards, eliminating the need to alter the existing signal and power infrastructure for the cables. Furthermore, the new design requires fewer digital processing steps and less power per bit of information.
Researchers at Macquarie University in Sydney, who are also collaborating on this study, have developed a glass chip to operate the 19-core fiber optic cables. Using 3D printing technology, researchers etched a waveguide pattern into the glass chip, facilitating the transmission of signals into the 19 individual cores with low and uniform signal loss.
The researchers hope that this technology will appear in undersea fiber optic cables within the next 5-10 years, facilitating global information and data exchange across various fields, according to a press release.
